How to Ruin a Wedding in 7 Easy Steps

Ever feel like you’re competing with the guests to take wedding photographs?

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING STEPS ARE SATIRICAL.

If you’re a professional photographer than chances are you shoot weddings, and rightfully so. Weddings make for great photographs and consistent income. However, one of the biggest challenges to overcome are the other “photographers” at the wedding. We’ve all seen these people, they’re distracting and oblivious. In their attempt to capture the wedding they actually ruin it for everyone else.

There is admittedly a trade-off between being in the right place to get the best photograph and trying to not be a distraction. However, if you’re one of the “photographers” we’re talking about, you don’t really care. In fact, it almost seems like these “photographers” are trying to ruin the wedding! Here are the 7 all-to-common mistakes these “photographers” make:

1. Turn on the Beep Function

The wedding chapel is likely going to be very quiet so what better way to make your presence known than turning on the beep function. Sure there are ways to turn off the sound settings (that are easily accessible from the menu screen) but you don’t care. If you wanted to make the most noise possible, try turning up the shutter noise volume to be as loud as possible!

2. Forget to Reserve Seats

Pre-planning is entirely overrated. Instead of showing up to the wedding early enough to get to a good seat you can show up late and ask people to move. Yeah, it might be distracting, but how else are you going to get awesome shots?!

3. Turn on Focus Assist and Red Eye Reduction

Everyone knows that on-camera flash makes for the best photographs. Besides, how else is your kit lens supposed to shoot in low light? Make sure you focus assist is turned on so that it flashes 3-4 times before you actually take a photograph. While you’re at it make sure the red eye reduction setting is on so a big orange light will fill up the chapel!

4. Put the Camera in Auto

With all those numbers and wheels on the camera who has time to learn what they all mean? Simply throw your camera into auto-mode and start shooting. What’s the worst that could happen?

5. Stand in the Aisle with the Bride

There is no better way to get a beautiful shot of a bride walking down an aisle than to stand right in the middle of it. While this may block the view for a few of the guests, and maybe the groom, it’s worth it because seeing the bride in pictures is far more important than seeing the bride in person.

6. Walk Around During the Wedding

If the paid photographer is allowed to walk around at the wedding so should you. Feel free to walk around the stage, the guests will be so focused on the bride and groom that they won’t notice you at all.

7. Block the Actual Photographers

Can’t think of a great place to shoot? Find the photographer. If you stand where he/she is shooting you will get a great shot.

The following video will cover all these steps and more.

So there you have it. If you’re looking to ruin your next wedding and frustrate the actual photographers simply follow these 7 steps. But if you want to actually do a good job and potentially become a paid photographer yourself, I highly recommend reading through our blog here on PremiumBeat, where you can learn all about cameras, lenses, and photography techniques.

To avoid the problems mentioned above I highly recommend asking the wedding coordinator to make an announcement before the wedding outlining what guests shouldn’t do during the ceremony. Different photographers can deal with different levels of nuisance, but for me I always ask for guests to remain in their seats, turn off their flash, and put up their cameras during family portrait time.

This satirical video was created by The Star as part of their Master Glass Series. Thanks for sharing guys!

Have any other tips for ruining a wedding? Have any wedding photography horror stories? We would love to hear them in the comments below.

I once did a wedding video where the photographer was a f@cking nuisance to everyone, she was intrucive, you could hear her shutter go off within a mile, and she kept “bumping” into me so i would move just for her to get one shot and then go off…i’m not bitter…ahahahah

Andrew Silk

The sad part about this video is that I witnessed the professional photographer hired by the couple who had the focus assist confirmation beep on on the whole time during the ceremony. I wanted to strangle them! Couples looking for a wedding photographer need to realize that there is a difference between someone with years of experience and some fly by night photographer who just picked up the camera at Walmart and is too lazy to read the manual for their camera!